Bees: their natural history and general management / Comprising a full and experimental examination of the various systems of native and foreign apiarians; with an analytical exposition of the errors of the theory of Huber; containing, also, the latest discoveries and improvements in every department of the apiary. By Robert Huish.

  • Robert Huish
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Bees: their natural history and general management / Comprising a full and experimental examination of the various systems of native and foreign apiarians; with an analytical exposition of the errors of the theory of Huber; containing, also, the latest discoveries and improvements in every department of the apiary. By Robert Huish. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the inexperienced apiarian with the miraculous rearing of a queen bee in a glass cell, ancl he may have thrown over his description of it all the varnish of direct ex- perimental knowledge; but the editors of the works above alluded to, instead of disgracing their pages by the admission of such a visionary tale, should boldly and indignantly have declared, that from their own experience in the natural economy of the insect, they were able to pronounce the circumstances as related by Huber to be directly impossible, and the whole of them based on fiction and imposition. If we examine the account which Huber gives of his invention of the royal jelly, the existence and efficacy of which are fully acquiesced in by the aforesaid editors, to what other conclusions are we necessarily driven, than that they are the dupes of a visionary enthusiast, whose greatest merit consists in his inventive powers, no matter how destitute those powers may be of all affinity with truth or probability ? Before, however, those editors bestowed their unqualified assent on the existence of this royal jelly, did they stop to put to themselves the following questions ?—By what kind of bee is it made ? Whence is it procured ? Is it a natural or an elaborated substance ? If natural, from what source is it derived ? If elaborated, in what stomach of the bee is it to be found ? How is it ad- ministered ? What are its constituent principles ? Is its existence optional or definite ? Whence does it derive its miraculous power of converting a common egg into a royal one ?—Will any of the aforesaid editors publicly answer these questions ? and ought they not to
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